CAEP 2024 Academic Symposium: adaptive platform trials in emergency medicine in Canada

The Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians 2024 Academic Symposium Panel on adaptive platform trials explored whether adaptive platform trials could be implemented in Canadian emergency departments (EDs). This panel aimed to propose and refine recommendations formulated by the results of a rapid review and responses from a panel of experts about conducting adaptive platform trials in EDs.

From November 2023 to May 2024, a rapid review was conducted on the existing logistical and ethical barriers and facilitators to structuring adaptive platform trials in emergency medicine. The emerging themes and ideas were collected and used to conduct individual semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders, including leaders in emergency medicine research, methodologists and biostatisticians specializing in these designs, patient partners, research personnel, and investigators involved in platform trials across Canada and abroad.

From 23 articles and 17 expert interviews, we identified facilitators and barriers to adaptive platform trials in Canadian emergency medicine spread across five domains: evidence strength and quality, relative advantage, adaptability, complexity, and implementation climate and readiness. The most salient needs according to investigators were purposeful and clinically relevant trial design, methodological expertise, and harmonious collaboration with ethics authorities. We provide 14 recommendations across 4 levels: policy, trialist, site, and patient to address barriers to adaptive platform trials in emergency medicine. For each recommendation, we provided corresponding implementation strategies from the Expert Recommendations for Implementing Change (ERIC).

Adaptive trial designs are well suited for emergency settings provided the interventions are both easy for clinicians to administer and relevant enough to ameliorate the practice of emergency medicine. These designs are particularly tailored to tackle confirmatory trials, emerging diseases, and trauma care, but barriers like a chaotic ED, complex statistical and methodological requirements, and regulatory considerations persist and require thoughtful implementation strategies.